Towards controlling the misuse of power it is always important to have effective arrangement to regulate lighting in a commercial place or a public place, namely offices, factories, hotels, hospitals, show-rooms, railway stations, streets etc. There are certain manual means available for switching individual or a group of lighting fixtures on or off using certain switches. One can control the lighting by turning the on/off switches on the wall. Which switch controls which light or sets of lights is pre-determined during the construction or renovation stage. It is thus expected that the last person leaving the office will manually turn off the light using the switch.
To reduce energy wastage due to people leaving lights on unnecessarily, some may choose to invest in a timer-based lighting control system. This timer system allows user to manually set pre-defined time of operation according to day-of-week to control when different group of lights will turn on or off at the pre-defined timing.
Depending on how the existing light fixtures are wired together during the renovation or construction phase, user cannot freely decide how they wish to configure and group the light fixture. For example, if switch #1 is wired to control the lobby and reception area lights, one can only install the timers to control when the lobby and reception lights operate. If the user wishes to control and set timing for these two areas separately, they will need to re-wire the electrical connection to do so.
ZigBee is a mesh network specification for low-power wireless local area networks (WLANs) that cover a large area. It is a global open language for wireless high-level communication protocols. Based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, ZigBee can be used to create a personal area networks built from small, low-power digital radios. Depending on its power output and environmental characteristics, ZigBee devices can transmit data over long distances by passing data through a mesh network of intermediate devices to reach more distant ones. ZigBee networks are secured by 128 bit symmetric encryption keys with a defined rate of 250 kbit/s which mean they are best suited for intermittent data transmissions from a sensor or input device.
By utilizing ZigBee technology, a novel smart lighting control system is being proposed herein, which is a wireless lighting control solution that allows users to remotely (1) control, (2) configure and (3) schedule any existing lighting in any locations.
The major advantage of the proposed lighting control system over stand-alone lighting controls or conventional manual switching is the ability to control individual lights or groups of lights from a single user interface device and can be used on existing lighting fixtures, regardless of the existing wiring circuitry. This ability to control multiple light sources from a user device allows complex lighting scenes to be created. A room may have multiple scenes pre-set, each one created for different activities in the room. A major benefit of lighting control systems is reduced energy consumption. Longer lamp life is also gained when dimming and switching off lights when not in use.
Wireless lighting control systems provide additional benefits including reduced installation costs and increased flexibility over where switches and sensors may be placed.
Other than installing conventional timers to control the light operation, there are also other so-called ‘smart lighting’ in the market. There are several major advantageous differences between the systems of instant invention over that of conventional offerings:
The conventional smart lightings are primarily focused on the smart home market, while the main object of the proposed system of the instant invention is capable of controlling large lighting networks with diverse lighting profiles in a commercial building or in the public place.
All conventional smart lighting systems use WIFI as their communication protocol. The proposed wireless lighting control system functions through its own novel wireless communication protocol, suitable for a large area.
All conventional smart lightings require users to purchase a new set of lighting units as their so-called smart mechanism is embedded within the lighting fixture itself. The wireless lighting control system, as proposed herein is particularly suited for retrofitting applications since it can re-use all the existing lightings without buying new ones, or it also be used for new lightings.
All other smart lightings allow users to switch on/off a limited number of lighting units due to the limitation of WIFI overbearing the network, particularly up to 10 lighting units in the network. The proposed wireless lighting control system herein has no limitation to the number of light sets that can join the network.
Object of the present invention is to propose a novel wireless lighting control system, particularly to control and manage the lighting operations in a commercial or public place; wherein said wireless lighting control system provides very high level of flexibility to the user towards controlling the lighting operations and to maximize the energy savings from the lighting system, without requiring re-wirings and/or purchasing new lightings.
Another object of the present invention is to propose a method to control lighting devices, preferably located in remote locations in large number within the personal network of the said wireless lighting control system, created preferably as a ZigBee mesh network.
Further another object of the invention is to propose a web based control platform to be installed in the data processing, controlling and transmitting unit of the said wireless lighting control system, wherein said control platform is characterized in sending the instructions from a desktop computer or a web-enabled device (namely mobile phone) to the said data processing unit of the lighting control system (the Gateway module of the said system herein) and wherein said software platform is further characterized in transmitting the wireless command from the Gateway module of the system to one or more controller(s), each responsible for power supply to one lighting device.
Further another object of the invention is to propose a method of wireless lighting control using the proposed wireless lighting control system; wherein said method includes (i) selection of optional group of lighting devices for simultaneous wireless control; (ii) scheduling of the wireless lighting control for individual lighting device or groups of lighting devices towards power on/off at optionally selected date and time or delaying the already made such schedule; and (iii) storing the instruction for wireless lighting control of one lighting device or groups of lighting devices to the memory of the Gateway module for realizing said instruction in any future time.